A man has shared his disgust after he realised he had bought a ready meal that was 19 months out of date from an Issa brothers' owned Euro Garage shop. 

Tom Woods, from Haslingden, was in the SPAR Euro Garage in Blackburn picking up a couple of ready meals on October 4.

After leaving the shop, on the Beehive Trading Estate in Haslingden Road, he discovered his Chips and Curry sauce ready meal expired in March 2022, a year and seven months ago.

He said: “It was only later that night that I had noticed it was a year and a half out of date.

"I work night shifts so I went back the next morning, it was around 5am to complain and get a refund.

“I had to come back later on as the manager wasn’t in yet but nobody seemed to think it was there problem or much of an issue. One guy working there wasn’t even taking I seriously.

“I went back to the freezer, and to my surprise, found that the shelf was full of out of date stock.

"I expected that someone would’ve removed all the expired food but they’d only taken out the food that was out of date by more than a year.

“The ‘freshest’ ready meals in the freezer expired in July 2023. The worker justified it by saying it was something to do with moving the stock around but that’s not good enough.

"You can’t be allowing customers to buy expired food. I don’t know how something like this can be missed. It isn’t a great look.”

Tom received a refund for the £1.75 chips and curry sauce ready meal but says he won’t be returning to the shop.

He said: “The shop is right by where I work so it was handy for me to go in there, especially because I work nights and it’s 24 hours. But no chance will I be going back there.”

An EG Group spokesperson said: “We take food safety very seriously and are looking into what happened as a priority.

"We provided the customer with a full refund and we look forward to welcoming him back to our sites in the future.”